Speaker 1: When we try to hold onto something and it's inevitably
Speaker 1: going to go away, that's painful. When we try to
Speaker 1: resist something and it's inevitable that it's going to come
Speaker 1: and be here, that's painful. Both of those are optional.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr
Speaker 1: Judd Brewer, a thought leader in the field of habit
Speaker 1: change and the science of self mastery. Judd is the
Speaker 1: director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and
Speaker 1: Associate Professor in Behavioral and Social sciences and psychiatry at
Speaker 1: the Schools of Public Health and Medicine at Brown University.
Speaker 1: His newest book is Unwinding Anxiety. New Science shows how
Speaker 1: to break the cycles of worry and fear to heal
Speaker 1: your mind. Hello, Dr Judd, welcome back. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 1: be discussing anxiety, bad habits, habit loops in general. But
Speaker 1: before we start, let's start, like we always do, with
Speaker 1: a parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter
Speaker 1: and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us that are always a battle. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops
Speaker 1: and she thinks about it for a second, and she
Speaker 1: looks up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well. I think it means
Speaker 1: a lot so in my life I can relate to
Speaker 1: that personally. You know, things that I do that I'm
Speaker 1: literally feeding, both mentally or physically, they get reinforced. And
Speaker 1: how that relates to my work is just about everything,
Speaker 1: because that's how habits are formed. Habits are driven not
Speaker 1: based on the behavior themselves, the behaviors themselves, but they're
Speaker 1: actually driven based on how rewarding they are. And you
Speaker 1: can think of that reward piece being us feeding them literally,
Speaker 1: you know, everything from intellectual curiosity being you know, feeding knowledge,
Speaker 1: and you can think of food as literally feeding you know,
Speaker 1: feeding sustenance. And in that sense, virtually everything we do
Speaker 1: I can't think of many exceptions, is really fed this way.
Speaker 1: So that's what it means to me. And the mechanism
Speaker 1: that you're talking about really is a very old evolutionary
Speaker 1: wise mechanism called reward based learning. Yes, it's actually evolutionarily
Speaker 1: conserved all the way back to the simplest of nervous systems.
Speaker 1: So the sea slug, which is the simplest known nervous system,
Speaker 1: it's got twenty thousand neurons. You know, we have a
Speaker 1: few more than that. But as humans, we learn most
Speaker 1: behaviors basically in the same way as sea slugs. So
Speaker 1: some people might think what sea slugs, but in fact
Speaker 1: they can teach us something about what we do, and
Speaker 1: we can look at our own experience to see how
Speaker 1: true it is for us. So basically, think of our
Speaker 1: ancient ancestors on the savannah or in the you know,
Speaker 1: the woods, foraging, you know, hunting and gathering. If they
Speaker 1: happened upon a food source, their brain needed to learn
Speaker 1: to remember where that was. So you can think of
Speaker 1: just three key elements. One is a trigger, second is
Speaker 1: the behavior, and the third is the result or the reward.
Speaker 1: So imagine foraging and then you come across food source like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's some edible mushrooms. So there's the trigger. You see
Speaker 1: the mushrooms. The behavior would be you eat the mushrooms.
Speaker 1: And then the reward from a neuroscientific standpoint, is your
Speaker 1: stomach sense this dopamine signal to your brain that says,
Speaker 1: remember what you ate and where you found it. So
Speaker 1: it's actually there to help us learn to remember things.
Speaker 1: Oh here's food. We also learned to avoid danger in
Speaker 1: very much the same way. You come across the while
Speaker 1: the animal that's gonna chase you down, you run away,
Speaker 1: there's the behavior, and then the reward is you don't
Speaker 1: get eaten. Right, So this is often referred to as
Speaker 1: the habit loop. So let's take that basic idea and
Speaker 1: apply it to a bad habit. So walk us through
Speaker 1: a habit loop of a bad habit. You could do
Speaker 1: a hundred of them, but yeah, could let's pick smoking
Speaker 1: or eating. Well, let's use eating because I think you know,
Speaker 1: smoking is pretty straightforward. You know, you're stressed out, you
Speaker 1: smoke a cigarette, and then you know you you feel
Speaker 1: a little bit of relief, and so you keep that going.
Speaker 1: In that case, the trigger is I'm stressed out, The
Speaker 1: routine or the habit is I smoke, and the reward
Speaker 1: is I feel a little bit of relief. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: if you apply this to eating, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: we can think of smoking as some behavior that we've
Speaker 1: learned that we don't need to do to survive. But
Speaker 1: eating gets trickier because we could be driven by physiologic
Speaker 1: hunger and scientific terms, we talked about homeostatic hunger because
Speaker 1: we need to get back to homeostasis when we're hungry,
Speaker 1: but we could also think about this in terms of
Speaker 1: hedonic hunger, which is just a fancy term for emotional eating.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about hedonic hunger. You know, eating in
Speaker 1: the absence of hunger is driven by boredom, by stress,
Speaker 1: by loneliness, you know, by a bunch of things, and
Speaker 1: so you can think of whatever that emotional state is
Speaker 1: as a trigger. Let's say, you know, these are negative
Speaker 1: emotional states, but there can also be positive ones. We
Speaker 1: want to celebrate some great thing that happened, and then
Speaker 1: the behavior is we go get ice cream, go get cake,
Speaker 1: eat some chocolate whatever. Our favorite food is, our celebratory food,
Speaker 1: or we eat our comfort food if it's to help
Speaker 1: us not feel as bad as we're feeling. And then
Speaker 1: the result is, you know, if we're celebrating, we feel great.
Speaker 1: If it's that we're trying to distract ourselves or feel
Speaker 1: better from the boredom, from the sadness, loneliness, whatever that
Speaker 1: helps us distract us is a little bit or feel
Speaker 1: a little bit better. I had a patient who used
Speaker 1: to binge eat, and she would describe it as numbing
Speaker 1: herself out from negative emotions. She would binge to the
Speaker 1: point where she would just numb out. Does that make
Speaker 1: sense totally? I have a question about that because as
Speaker 1: we look at bad habits or bad habits taken too far, right,
Speaker 1: we start to refer to that as addiction. Right, and
Speaker 1: in addiction, it seems that something breaks in that that
Speaker 1: habit loop doesn't get updated. It's like, for a long time,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, trigger, as I feel bad, the thing
Speaker 1: I do is I take a drug and the reward
Speaker 1: is I feel better. But after a little while that
Speaker 1: starts to become I feel bad. I take a drug.
Speaker 1: Maybe I feel better for just a brief second and
Speaker 1: then I feel terrible. Yes, or I eat, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm binge eating, I eat, I might feel better for
Speaker 1: a flicker of a second, and then I feel terrible.
Speaker 1: So it's like that loop doesn't learn. It doesn't learn.
Speaker 1: You know. This goes back to your parable. We're constantly
Speaker 1: the loop is designed for deficit, meaning the one you
Speaker 1: feed it gets hungry again and it says, do that again,
Speaker 1: do that again. I like the simple definition of addiction
Speaker 1: as continued just despite adverse consequences. Right, So the habit
Speaker 1: could be could be anything where you know, let's say eating,
Speaker 1: you know, and so oh you get a little bit
Speaker 1: of chocolate. But then if we keep doing that to
Speaker 1: the point where we're eating chocolate every time we're stressed
Speaker 1: out or every time we're sad, or every time whatever,
Speaker 1: and we start to notice that we're gaining a bunch
Speaker 1: of weight or we're getting cavities or whatever. We can see. Oh,
Speaker 1: they're the adverse consequences that are coming from this, so
Speaker 1: that the habit has kind of bled into addiction just
Speaker 1: because we're continuing to do it over and over and over,
Speaker 1: because that habit loop has literally been fed. And is
Speaker 1: it that the consequences in most cases come after the reward,
Speaker 1: and so even if that reward has become vanishingly slim,
Speaker 1: it's still there for a flicker, even if then what
Speaker 1: comes as bad. And that's why the loop can't be
Speaker 1: updated as easily. Yeah, and I'm glad you bring that
Speaker 1: up because there's a nuance here. So it's as you
Speaker 1: are talking about. But also when we form habits, habits
Speaker 1: are actually set up in a way that I think
Speaker 1: of as set and forget, so as in, we set
Speaker 1: the habit and then we forget about the details. And
Speaker 1: that's actually set up so that we don't have to
Speaker 1: remember or relearn everything every day, right, So we often
Speaker 1: set up habits. Let's keep going with the eating theme.
Speaker 1: Birthday cake for example. You know, we set up the
Speaker 1: reward of the birthday cake when we were a kid,
Speaker 1: and every time we went to a birthday party, it
Speaker 1: gets associated, you know, not only the taste of the cake,
Speaker 1: but with presents and friends and fun and all this
Speaker 1: and rinse and repeat. You know, this happens over and
Speaker 1: over and over to the point where you know, say
Speaker 1: a middle age and our brain just says, oh, it
Speaker 1: sees cake, and it says, oh, I know how rewarding
Speaker 1: that is. Just eat it. So we're not actually often
Speaker 1: paying attention to how rewarding that behavior is right in
Speaker 1: that moment. And if we don't pay attention, our brain
Speaker 1: does not change. It can't update that reward value, and
Speaker 1: so it doesn't change the behavior. And that's actually a
Speaker 1: critical piece for what sustains behaviors and also is a
Speaker 1: critical element for changing behavior. And this is where being
Speaker 1: mindful of what you're doing is so important. Like what
Speaker 1: you just said, it allows us to update that reward information. Yes,
Speaker 1: so specifically, there's a part of the brain called the
Speaker 1: orbitofrontome cortex which is involved in setting reward values and
Speaker 1: kind of holding them in mind, and it kind of
Speaker 1: sets up this reward hierarchy so that when given a
Speaker 1: choice between two behaviors, it says, oh, pick this one.
Speaker 1: I already know how rewarding the So for example, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're giving a choice between broccoli and cake, our
Speaker 1: brain says cake, duh, you know. And that's set up
Speaker 1: not only from the caloric density standpoint, from a survival standpoint,
Speaker 1: but from all the birthday parties and all of these things,
Speaker 1: so that reward hierarchy is set up so strongly. This
Speaker 1: is why parents don't bring out dessert at the same
Speaker 1: time as vegetables because their kids are you know, duh.
Speaker 1: Their kids are not gonna eat the vegetables. But that
Speaker 1: reward high degree also is the critical element for change.
Speaker 1: So if we don't pay attention to how rewarding something
Speaker 1: is right now, we're not going to change the behavior.
Speaker 1: We're just going to keep going through the behavior and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I've got this set reward value and I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: assume it's the same and I'm not actually going to
Speaker 1: pay attention. I'll give an example that a guy who
Speaker 1: came in so my clinic who wanted to quit smoking
Speaker 1: and he'd been smoking about forty years, so he had
Speaker 1: reinforced his smoking habit loop about three hundred thousand times literally, right,
Speaker 1: they got a pack of cigarettes. Twenty cigarettes in a pack,
Speaker 1: three five days a year. Anybody can do that math.
Speaker 1: So there he had reinforced it. And what I had
Speaker 1: him do was start paying attention as he was smoking.
Speaker 1: And he came back and he's like, how did I
Speaker 1: not notice this before? You know, these cigarettes taste like crap? Well,
Speaker 1: it was because he would smoke a cigarette to help
Speaker 1: his dopamine deficit, because he was addicted to the nicotine,
Speaker 1: and that relief from the dopamine deficit was what he
Speaker 1: was focusing on as compared to the actual act of smoking.
Speaker 1: And as he started to pay attention to what the
Speaker 1: smoking actually tasted like, it helped him update that reward value.
Speaker 1: And we've just recently done some studies where we can
Speaker 1: actually map out the change in reward value over time
Speaker 1: as people simply bring in mindfulness practices and pay attention
Speaker 1: when they're smoking cigarettes, or when they're over eating or
Speaker 1: when they're eating junk food. Is that based on people's
Speaker 1: surveyed response to how the activity feels. We try to
Speaker 1: do it in the moment, so that's the best way
Speaker 1: to collect accurate data. And so we've developed these app
Speaker 1: based mindfulness training programs, and what we've done is we've
Speaker 1: embedded something that we call the creating Tool, which basically
Speaker 1: has people pay attention as they're doing the behavior. So
Speaker 1: if they're smoking a cigarette, it has this checklist that
Speaker 1: walks them through. It says, Okay, notice what it smells like. Okay,
Speaker 1: check take a drag, you know, click on the box,
Speaker 1: What does it taste like? How does it feel going
Speaker 1: into your lungs? What does it smell like coming out
Speaker 1: of your mouth? And then we asked them how content
Speaker 1: do you feel now, you know, and we have them
Speaker 1: check in with their body, checking with our emotions, check
Speaker 1: in with themselves to see how rewarding was that behavior?
Speaker 1: Right then, same thing for eating. We have them pay
Speaker 1: attention as they eat and then ask them how content
Speaker 1: do you feel? And then we also asked them how
Speaker 1: much did you eat so they can line that up.
Speaker 1: If they overrate and they don't feel very content, that
Speaker 1: actually decreases the reward value in their brain so that
Speaker 1: the next time they come back they can remember it.
Speaker 1: So the other piece that we've put in this tool
Speaker 1: is basically an imagination exercise where before they do the behavior,
Speaker 1: So after they've done them mindful eating or mindful smoking,
Speaker 1: we have them pay attention and say, okay, imagine doing
Speaker 1: this behavior before you do it, and bring to mind
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do and do it, which basically brings
Speaker 1: forward the previous times that they've done it. And as
Speaker 1: they've paid attention previously and updated that reward value, then
Speaker 1: that's what gets stored in their brain, and as they
Speaker 1: imagine doing it in the future, their future imagination is
Speaker 1: based on previous behavior, and so that updated reward value
Speaker 1: from the last time they've done it gets into their
Speaker 1: brain and it actually helps them become less excited to
Speaker 1: do it if that reward value is dropped. Now get
Speaker 1: this so we can collect all these data as people
Speaker 1: are in their daily lives do doing these things. It
Speaker 1: only takes ten to fifteen times of somebody using this
Speaker 1: craving tool for the reward value to trop basically to
Speaker 1: zero ten to fifteen times. So it's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody has been smoking for years, it's going to take
Speaker 1: years for them to realize that smoking really taste crappy,
Speaker 1: and that it's gonna be crappy enough that it updates
Speaker 1: the reward value. It takes ten to fifteen times of
Speaker 1: people really paying attention where they become significantly disenchanted with
Speaker 1: the behavior. That's pretty remarkable. And so the key then
Speaker 1: is to do the behavior very mindfully, then very much
Speaker 1: sort of check in on how rewarding was that. And
Speaker 1: now while I have that idea in mind, like, boy,
Speaker 1: that wasn't so great, I imagine myself doing it again
Speaker 1: from where I'm sitting right now, which then sort of
Speaker 1: updates that value. That's basically it. And the only slight
Speaker 1: tweak there is, next time they haven't urge to do
Speaker 1: the savior, we have them go through the imagination exercise
Speaker 1: because right afterwards they might not be that excited to
Speaker 1: do it again. But the next time they want to
Speaker 1: smoke a cigarette or eat the comfort food or eat
Speaker 1: the junk food or whatever, that's the time where we
Speaker 1: can bring this in. So it can kind of bring
Speaker 1: that recollection up so that they can become disenchanted right
Speaker 1: in that moment and help them actually change the behavior. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the imagination exercises before they do it the next
Speaker 1: time yeah. Yeah, and with this mindfulness training, when we've
Speaker 1: delivered this in person, we've had people get five times
Speaker 1: the quit rates of gold standard treatment. Right. More recently,
Speaker 1: at a study that was led by Ashley Mason at
Speaker 1: UCSF word she found at fort reduction and craving related
Speaker 1: eating and so you know, we can see significant change
Speaker 1: as people go through this mindfulness training and in particular
Speaker 1: pay attention to the results of their behaviors. What are
Speaker 1: your ideas on moderation in the case of people who
Speaker 1: have had an addiction. I work with a lot of patients,
Speaker 1: for example, who don't want to quit drinking altogether. You know,
Speaker 1: they've struggled with drinking, but they really struggle even more
Speaker 1: with imagining a life of abstinence. And so there's a
Speaker 1: there's a lot of research around this idea of harm reduction.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's better to help people meet them
Speaker 1: where they're at, rather than try to force them to
Speaker 1: be somewhere that they might never be able to go.
Speaker 1: So I very strongly found that that works pretty well
Speaker 1: in my clinic, and in particular it lines up with
Speaker 1: what we're seeing with this reward based learning piece, which
Speaker 1: is if people pay careful attention to what they're doing.
Speaker 1: This doesn't necessarily mean that, let's use alcohol as an example.
Speaker 1: It's not that alcohol is this evil thing. Now, the
Speaker 1: current research shows that no level of drinking is actually healthy,
Speaker 1: so you know, physical health benefits aside, you know, so
Speaker 1: I just need to state that as a physician. You know,
Speaker 1: the research is relatively clear that no level of drinking
Speaker 1: is that healthy. But if somebody wants to drink um,
Speaker 1: you know, socially, what my patients do is really pay
Speaker 1: attention to what it's like if they have one drink. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's that like? If they have two drinks, what's that like.
Speaker 1: For a lot of my patients, it's actually around two
Speaker 1: to three drinks where they start to lose control. So
Speaker 1: if they want to drink, if they want to, you know,
Speaker 1: do this in moderation. If they enjoy drinking wine, or
Speaker 1: if they enjoy the taste of beer or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: they can do that. And if they really pay careful attention,
Speaker 1: they can get that satisfaction from a single drink, and
Speaker 1: they can also notice and remind themselves what the consequences
Speaker 1: are afterwards. You know, if they drink a second or
Speaker 1: a third drink, and they get out of control, or
Speaker 1: they get drunk, or they bange or whatever. They can
Speaker 1: notice the results of that and say, oh, well, you
Speaker 1: know that's not helping. You know that's not leading me
Speaker 1: to a happier, healthier life. What's it like compared to
Speaker 1: simply drinking a single drink? And they can start to
Speaker 1: notice that the single drink gets them a lot of
Speaker 1: the benefit that they're looking for, but also doesn't have
Speaker 1: those adverse consequences that come with binging or getting out
Speaker 1: of control. Half the listeners of this show just set
Speaker 1: down their headphones and are now about to throw off
Speaker 1: twenty years and have a drink. So so I'll point
Speaker 1: that out as well. So folks that have you know,
Speaker 1: years of sobriety, they can probably notice the benefit of
Speaker 1: being completely sober. There. There are huge benefits to that
Speaker 1: as well, and from a physical health standpoint, that's probably
Speaker 1: the way to go. So I think it's really important,
Speaker 1: especially if somebody has had twenty years of sobriety, it's
Speaker 1: really important for them to focus on what that feels
Speaker 1: like now to live the sober life. I have tons
Speaker 1: of patients who just feel really good physically mentally that
Speaker 1: you know, they just feel sharper, they're they're on you know,
Speaker 1: everything about their life feels better if they focus on
Speaker 1: that as compared to what, you know, what they get
Speaker 1: with a single drink. Often people are like, this isn't
Speaker 1: really doing it for me? You know, it's easier for
Speaker 1: them to even maintain the sobriety itself, right. I often
Speaker 1: talk about, in my case, the beautiful clarity of zero.
Speaker 1: You know, for me, I start waiting out of that,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot of contemplation and debating and which
Speaker 1: I do this and a lot of work and zero
Speaker 1: is just zero. Yes, absolutely, So let's take this habit
Speaker 1: loop idea and apply it to anxiety. In what way
Speaker 1: does this help us with anxiety? Well, a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't think of anxiety as being driven by habit loops,
Speaker 1: but in fact, there's quite a bit of research showing
Speaker 1: that anxiety can actually be reinforced in the same way
Speaker 1: as smoking or over eating or any other habit. T D.
Speaker 1: Boork Effect started doing some of this research at Penn
Speaker 1: State back in the eighties and is published quite a
Speaker 1: bit on this. Basically, if you think of that trigger
Speaker 1: behavior results relationship, so that trigger could be a negative emotion.
Speaker 1: The behavior in this case is a mental behavior worrying.
Speaker 1: So worrying does a lot of things. It can make
Speaker 1: us feel like we're in control, It can distract us
Speaker 1: from that negative emotion, It can help us plan for
Speaker 1: a worst case scenario. You know, there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of things that worrying actually does. The results of that
Speaker 1: can actually perpetuate anxiety and worry habit loops. So if
Speaker 1: the distraction from the negative emotion feels better than the
Speaker 1: negative emotion itself, there's a reward in that. If the
Speaker 1: feeling like somebody is in control or problem solving, even
Speaker 1: if they're not really solving the problem, that feeling of
Speaker 1: doing something feels better than doing nothing, there's a reward
Speaker 1: in that, And all of those will drive themselves as
Speaker 1: anxiety habit loops. You know, I hadn't learned this in
Speaker 1: my psychiatry residency training. It was only when I started
Speaker 1: to look at these mechanisms and to try to understand
Speaker 1: why were my patients suffering so much that I started
Speaker 1: to understand this myself. And in fact, I do this
Speaker 1: now with every new patient that comes into my clinic.
Speaker 1: The first thing I'll do is, as I'm taking a history.
Speaker 1: I'll have them map out their habit loops and I'll
Speaker 1: give it. I'll give an example of some that I've
Speaker 1: been seeing in my clinic who came in referred for anxiety,
Speaker 1: and you know, he sat down and I had him
Speaker 1: described what it was like. And he said, well, I
Speaker 1: go on the highway and I feel like I'm in
Speaker 1: a speeding bullet in his car. And he said that
Speaker 1: thought would lead me to avoid driving on the highway
Speaker 1: to the point where I just don't drive on the
Speaker 1: highway anymore. So we mapped it out on a piece
Speaker 1: of paper. Actually, we just mapped it out in thirty seconds. Okay,
Speaker 1: the trigger is these thoughts, the behavior is not driving
Speaker 1: on the highway, and then the reward is that he
Speaker 1: could avoid those negative feeling thoughts. And this was to
Speaker 1: the point where he had full blown panic disorder. He
Speaker 1: would avoid driving on the highway. He barely drove on
Speaker 1: the local roads. And just him being able to see
Speaker 1: this right, just to map this out in thirty seconds,
Speaker 1: was was really eye opening for him where he could
Speaker 1: start to understand rather than his mind being this black box,
Speaker 1: he could understand what was act really happening. So once
Speaker 1: he sees that is it just the scene it that
Speaker 1: starts to unwind it. So let's continue with him because
Speaker 1: he's an interesting example. So this gentleman, he met all
Speaker 1: the criteria for panic disorder, meant all the criteria for
Speaker 1: generalized anxiety disorder, and he was also very overweight. It
Speaker 1: was about eighty pounds overweight. So I sent him home
Speaker 1: with the instruction to just map out these habit loops.
Speaker 1: I gave him our unwinning anxiety app and said, go
Speaker 1: map out these habit loops. He came back two weeks
Speaker 1: later and the first thing he said to me was
Speaker 1: I lost fourteen pounds. And I looked at him quizzically
Speaker 1: because we hadn't even approached that yet. I was going
Speaker 1: to save the eating piece for later, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, I started mapping out my habit loops, so
Speaker 1: anxiety was triggering me to eat, and that actually was
Speaker 1: making me feel bad about myself because it wasn't fixing
Speaker 1: my anxiety and it was just causing me to gain weight.
Speaker 1: And I know that, you know, my weight is very
Speaker 1: unhealthy right now. So he became completely disenchanted with the
Speaker 1: overeating through that mechanism of just learning how his mind worked,
Speaker 1: which goes back to this orbit of frontal cortex piece.
Speaker 1: If we bring awareness in the first step is to
Speaker 1: map out a habit loop. That's what he did. What
Speaker 1: this does is it can naturally lead to a second step,
Speaker 1: which is becoming disenchanted with our behavior. And the way
Speaker 1: we can do that is by paying attention to the
Speaker 1: cause and effect relationship. What does what's the result of
Speaker 1: the behavior that we do. So he was paying attention
Speaker 1: to the eating and he realized that the result of
Speaker 1: that was that he didn't actually feel very good about
Speaker 1: himself and he wasn't losing weight. So he became disenchanted
Speaker 1: with doing that behavior. He didn't have to force himselves
Speaker 1: to stop doing it, He just stopped being interested in
Speaker 1: doing that, and over the course of five to six months,
Speaker 1: he lost over a hundred pounds. Notice how that doesn't
Speaker 1: take willpower, grit force, or anything. It was literally tapping
Speaker 1: into that same redward based learning mechanism that had driven
Speaker 1: the process in the first place. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I see in a lot of people that I
Speaker 1: do one on one work with is that we don't
Speaker 1: see those loops very clearly because we have so much
Speaker 1: self judgment that just sort of kicks in and seems
Speaker 1: to trigger all this emotional which doesn't allow us to
Speaker 1: learn that part of what you guys see also absolutely
Speaker 1: absolutely so I bet you could map out self judgment
Speaker 1: habit loops with folks that you work with. I see
Speaker 1: this all the time in my clinic, especially with folks
Speaker 1: who feel like their weight is unhealthy. So thinking of
Speaker 1: a patient right now, who we get up in the
Speaker 1: morning look in the mirror. Okay, so there's the trigger.
Speaker 1: Her behavior was to judge herself for being overweight, and
Speaker 1: then the result was that she would get into this
Speaker 1: shame spiral. Yet because she had binge eating disorder, she
Speaker 1: would actually because that negative emotion was a trigger for
Speaker 1: her to binge. Sometimes she would binge, you know, ironically
Speaker 1: because she was judging herself for being overweight. So that
Speaker 1: self judgment habit loop is there all the time. I
Speaker 1: think in the West we're very good at judging ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the ultimate mechanisms in the
Speaker 1: downward spiral of addiction. You know, I feel bad, so
Speaker 1: I use Now I feel worse about myself. So what
Speaker 1: tool do I have to deal with except to you?
Speaker 1: And it's just but yeah, I do think there is
Speaker 1: that ability. Like we talk a lot about self compassion
Speaker 1: being a really powerful tool, not just because it makes
Speaker 1: you feel better, that's great, but because it allows you
Speaker 1: to learn. If you can suspend that judgment and move
Speaker 1: into a more neutral place, you're actually able to learn
Speaker 1: and learning. As you're pointing out here, learning and seeing
Speaker 1: is really the key to to unwinding a lot of
Speaker 1: these things. Yes, yes, And I like the framework that
Speaker 1: Carold Dweck put or ward you know, decades ago, around
Speaker 1: growth mindset. You may be familiar with this, but just
Speaker 1: two for anybody that's not. She talks about fixed versus
Speaker 1: growth mindset, and she had focused in the educational space
Speaker 1: where you know, if if a student feels like they've
Speaker 1: got a fixed i Q, then they're not going to
Speaker 1: be able to change. But if somebody imagines that it's
Speaker 1: not fixed, there in this growth mindset and they actually
Speaker 1: do better in school. I think this is actually true
Speaker 1: for all of us. If we get locked into self
Speaker 1: judgment or shame spirals, we literally are closed down and
Speaker 1: we are not open to learning. But if we can
Speaker 1: bring awareness in and get curious, oh, here's this habit
Speaker 1: loop already it opens this up and it literally feels
Speaker 1: more open. So my lab just finished a study in
Speaker 1: fact looking at these things where we had people rate
Speaker 1: a bunch of different types of mind states, everything from
Speaker 1: anxiety to frustration, to connection, to joy to curiosity, and
Speaker 1: universally people reported that anxiety, feeling, frustrated, anger, things like
Speaker 1: that all felt more closed down in and contracted, whereas
Speaker 1: things like joy, connection, curiosity felt open. So even there
Speaker 1: we can see how frustration, anger, those are motivated states.
Speaker 1: Those are not states where we're looking for more information.
Speaker 1: They say go do something, whereas curiosity literally feels more
Speaker 1: open and opens us up into this growth mindset where
Speaker 1: we can learn. So I'm really glad you brought that forward.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to an anxiety habit loop. So
Speaker 1: I can imagine some people who are listening saying something like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know that I worry, and I know that it
Speaker 1: doesn't do me any good, and that the more I worry,
Speaker 1: the more sick to my stomach I feel, and the
Speaker 1: more sick to my stomach I feel, the less able
Speaker 1: I am to show up at my job and do
Speaker 1: a good job. So they started see that what's the
Speaker 1: next step for somebody to go from there. Yes, so
Speaker 1: we've talked about the first two steps. We haven't talked
Speaker 1: about the third step yet. So step one map out
Speaker 1: that habit. Step two, you know, check in to see
Speaker 1: what we're getting from this. And as you're pointing out,
Speaker 1: with worry, it's pretty straightforward. For most people, it's not
Speaker 1: getting us anything, right. So if we can see that
Speaker 1: that reward value of worrying starts to drop, now that
Speaker 1: opens the door for step three, which I think of
Speaker 1: as bringing in a b BO, a bigger better offer. Okay.
Speaker 1: So our brain it's always looking for something better, and
Speaker 1: it says, well, you know, I worry doesn't feel that great,
Speaker 1: give me something better. Okay. So here, well let me
Speaker 1: ask you what feels better, worry or curiosity? Curiosity? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So here we can use simple mindfulness practices. And I
Speaker 1: think of the attitudinal quality of mindfulness as that of
Speaker 1: being curious. So if we simply get curious. So let's
Speaker 1: think of this somebody's worrying, and they can get curious
Speaker 1: and start to notice, Oh, what thoughts are going through
Speaker 1: my head as I'm worrying? What does this feel like
Speaker 1: in my body as I'm worrying? And in particular, we
Speaker 1: give people an exercise to explore that worri or the
Speaker 1: anxiety in their body and just ask a simple question,
Speaker 1: do I feel it more on my right side or
Speaker 1: my left side? Or is it more in the front
Speaker 1: or is it more in the back. And what that
Speaker 1: does is it engenders this natural is it more on
Speaker 1: my right side on my left side? Because that draws
Speaker 1: in our natural curiosity. It doesn't matter what side it's on,
Speaker 1: or whether it's in the front more or in the back.
Speaker 1: But just asking the question naturally brings up our curiosity
Speaker 1: is it more on the right side or the left side?
Speaker 1: And right there were more curious than we were a
Speaker 1: moment ago, and that helps us tap into the curiosity
Speaker 1: right then and there when we're anxious or we're worried.
Speaker 1: And it also helps us see, oh, these are physical sensations.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can be with these physical sensations rather than
Speaker 1: trying to push them away or get rid of them
Speaker 1: or avoid them. Oh what's this feel like? Oh it's vibration,
Speaker 1: it's tightness, its tension, And we can start to explore
Speaker 1: what is worry actually feel like. And then as we
Speaker 1: explore it, we start to notice that it's constantly changing,
Speaker 1: and so we don't have to be as afraid of
Speaker 1: it or trying to constantly avoid it as much as
Speaker 1: we might habitually have done in the past. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense? Totally? Totally. One of my favorite questions that
Speaker 1: I'll use is something like how do I know I'm sad?
Speaker 1: I'll find my brain declaring an emotional state, and then
Speaker 1: I'll go, how do I know that I'm that? And
Speaker 1: it it does that immediate, like I have to start
Speaker 1: sort of on a detective hunt, Like, well, that's a
Speaker 1: good question. How do I know? Yeah, well, I guess
Speaker 1: there's these thoughts and I like that idea. I think
Speaker 1: you and I may have talked about this last time
Speaker 1: you're on that if you start to unpack, these things
Speaker 1: tend to land on us. Is this like boom? But
Speaker 1: if you can start to unpack, like, oh, there's some
Speaker 1: thoughts here, there's some of physical sensations here, there's a
Speaker 1: desired behavior that's being called for here, is I start
Speaker 1: to unpack those? Each of those is easier to handle
Speaker 1: than one big blob. Absolutely, It's like, you know, a
Speaker 1: thunderstorm by itself can seem big and bad and scary
Speaker 1: to a kid. But if the parent is explaining to
Speaker 1: the child, oh, well, there's lightning, there's thunder, there's rain,
Speaker 1: there's wind. Suddenly the child understands what it is and
Speaker 1: it's not this foreign, big, bad entity. It's something of
Speaker 1: a natural wonder. Oh thunderstorm. Yeah, that's a great example.
Speaker 1: I have been looking for an analogy of that, and
Speaker 1: that's a really good one. Thunderstorm. Going back to anxiety,
Speaker 1: you you mentioned that the trigger is a negative emotion
Speaker 1: which would send us into worry. The reward then is
Speaker 1: that we would feel a little bit better, except until
Speaker 1: we don't. Right. Is part of it getting back to
Speaker 1: that original core emotion that we're trying to run away from.
Speaker 1: I think really core to this is related to getting
Speaker 1: back to it, which is being able to be with
Speaker 1: the original emotion. So that's really the core of mindfulness
Speaker 1: in general, which is to change our relationship to whatever
Speaker 1: the emotion is. Often the habitual tendency is, you know,
Speaker 1: to kind of use our willpower or our control and
Speaker 1: say this is unpleasant. I want to make it go away.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to try to do something. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: distract myself, I'm going to force it out of my
Speaker 1: mind whatever. The key here is really learning to be
Speaker 1: in relationship with whatever is. And so if we can
Speaker 1: be hey with whatever is there, that core emotion, we
Speaker 1: can be intimate with it, We can allow it to
Speaker 1: do whatever it's doing in the moment, and then also
Speaker 1: allow it to pass. So instead of pushing it away
Speaker 1: when it comes up, we allow it to come, instead
Speaker 1: of holding onto it. If it's a positive emotion, we
Speaker 1: allow it to pass. And both of those are really
Speaker 1: key aspects of what mindfulness is all about, is changing
Speaker 1: that relationship. So we can really focus in on what's
Speaker 1: it like to resist an emotion? What's it like to
Speaker 1: hold onto an emotion? You know, both of those are
Speaker 1: actually painful. When we try to hold onto something and
Speaker 1: it's inevitably going to go away, that's painful. Right When
Speaker 1: we try to resist something and it's inevitable that it's
Speaker 1: going to come and be here, that's painful. Both of
Speaker 1: those are optional. So curiosity is one strategy. What are
Speaker 1: other strategies for being with something that doesn't feel good?
Speaker 1: This idea of be with the emotion, welcome the emotion,
Speaker 1: allow it to be there, At least it seems to
Speaker 1: me it's a pretty common notion and that just maybe
Speaker 1: that I interview people who talk about it every week, right,
Speaker 1: But what I find with a lot of people that
Speaker 1: I talked to, they're like, well, I did that and
Speaker 1: I still felt terrible. And so I think one of
Speaker 1: the things is to say, well, okay, yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: just you know, I think we hope like, if I
Speaker 1: just to allow the emotion to be here, it's just
Speaker 1: another strategy to immediately get it to go away. But
Speaker 1: what are some strategies for going all right, I'm allowing
Speaker 1: this emotion to be here, and yes, I know it
Speaker 1: will pass, but it's not passing on a time scale
Speaker 1: I would particularly like, So how do I settle in here?
Speaker 1: So there are a couple of things that we can do.
Speaker 1: The first one is that we can turn toward ourselves
Speaker 1: to see is there impatience here? Am I not okay
Speaker 1: with the present moment? Because you're talking about this time scale,
Speaker 1: it's not on the time scale that I want, meaning
Speaker 1: I'm not okay with what's happening. And for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, it's really about identifying that impatience and noticing
Speaker 1: what impatience feels like, and bringing a kind curious awareness
Speaker 1: to that, Oh, here's impatience, What does impatients feel like?
Speaker 1: And focusing in there. Related to that is resistance, because
Speaker 1: often where there's impatience, their resistance, and we can focus
Speaker 1: in there what its resistance feel I can get curious
Speaker 1: about that and explore that. That helps us learn a
Speaker 1: whole lot about our habitual reactions. Oh, here's an impatience,
Speaker 1: you know, peace, or a habit loop. You know, here's
Speaker 1: reactivity or here's resistance. Another thing that we can do
Speaker 1: is to bring kindness in. You mentioned this just briefly,
Speaker 1: and I want to unpack it a little bit more.
Speaker 1: You know, we can't force ourselves to accept things, but
Speaker 1: we can notice the difference between the opposite of kindness
Speaker 1: would be judging or or meanness, you know, or whatever.
Speaker 1: How are we relating to ourselves in these moments? Are
Speaker 1: we relating to ourselves in a way that's kind or
Speaker 1: are we relating to ourselves in a way that is
Speaker 1: judgmental or even harsh? And we can see this in
Speaker 1: even subtle things. I remember being on a a long
Speaker 1: silent meditation retreat where it was helping me dial into
Speaker 1: all the subtle way is that I was not being
Speaker 1: kind to myself, and I even noticed that the way
Speaker 1: I was brushing my teeth was kind of forced like
Speaker 1: as compared to with kindness. So we can see it
Speaker 1: even in these subtle, seemingly habitual things that we do,
Speaker 1: like brushing our teeth, and we can notice the difference
Speaker 1: between that and simply being kind as we do these
Speaker 1: behaviors that are supposed to benefit ourselves. Do you find
Speaker 1: that having a formal meditation practice makes people better able
Speaker 1: to practice these skills that you give them in your
Speaker 1: clinic or you give them via your app Is there
Speaker 1: a correlation of Okay, I spend time formally sitting down
Speaker 1: and trying to practice, does that strengthen these mindfulness muscles?
Speaker 1: Do you find and is that an important part of
Speaker 1: being able to get over anxiety or smoking or eating
Speaker 1: is to actually get my ability to practice these mindfulness
Speaker 1: based type things. Do I get better at it over time? Well? Certainly,
Speaker 1: I think we get better at anything that we do
Speaker 1: over time. So it's it's, you know, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So if we feed the habit of practicing mindfulness, it's
Speaker 1: going to strengthen. Now, when we were doing some of
Speaker 1: our early clinical studies, we were looking at both formal
Speaker 1: mindfulness practices like meditation, and we were also looking at
Speaker 1: informal in the moment practices. So, for example, if somebody
Speaker 1: was paying attention as they were smoking a cigarette in
Speaker 1: our smoking studies, that counted as an informal mindfulness practice
Speaker 1: because they were paying attention. We found that both correlated
Speaker 1: with clinical outcomes, but in fact we found that the
Speaker 1: informal practices were stronger in their mediation effects or their
Speaker 1: moderation effects to be precise. So we actually started changing
Speaker 1: up our training to the point where we start with
Speaker 1: the informal stuff. We say, you know, don't commit to
Speaker 1: sitting thirty minutes a day, don't don't worry about that.
Speaker 1: Let's start with helping you understand how your mind works.
Speaker 1: Let's start with helping you work through these three steps
Speaker 1: where you map out your habit lives, where you look
Speaker 1: at the cause and effect relationship, and where you start
Speaker 1: to bring even in a moment, you bring in kindness
Speaker 1: rather than self judgment. The more people do that, the
Speaker 1: more they can start to see how mindfulness works, and
Speaker 1: then they can start to apply that in ways where
Speaker 1: the formal practices support the informal daily practices. So we
Speaker 1: start layering in the formal practices after we start with
Speaker 1: the informal stuff, and I think it gives people a
Speaker 1: much better framework with which to understand and benefit from
Speaker 1: the formal meditation practices. So you're having people bring mindfulness
Speaker 1: to a situation. So I'm going to smoke. I bring
Speaker 1: mindfulness to the experience of smoking, and that's where my
Speaker 1: mindfulness is. Is it important that it expands beyond those
Speaker 1: moments or is it just enough to just be mindful
Speaker 1: just in those moments. I know that's a question there's
Speaker 1: not a simple answer to. So yes, it is complex,
Speaker 1: like you're saying. Yet I think that the more we
Speaker 1: just even focus in on those simple things, the more
Speaker 1: it helps us start to just naturally see how our
Speaker 1: binds work, and our minds are really good at generalizing
Speaker 1: things where they'll say, oh, maybe it's also over here,
Speaker 1: maybe it's also over here. And I see this all
Speaker 1: the time, both in my clinical work and in our
Speaker 1: research studies, where people make these insights and make these
Speaker 1: leaps where it had nothing to do with what we
Speaker 1: were talking about in the training, but they're seeing the
Speaker 1: parallels and they're seeing that these habit loops are playing
Speaker 1: out somewhere else. For example, we did this study with
Speaker 1: anxious physicians. We gave them our unwinning anxiety app and
Speaker 1: we were just focusing on helping them with anxiety. Yet
Speaker 1: we found that there was a strong correlation between anxiety
Speaker 1: and burnout. And we also found, without even mentioning the
Speaker 1: word burnout in any of the training, that we got
Speaker 1: a fifty percent reduction in certain aspects of burnout simply
Speaker 1: by people helping to unwind their anxiety, but also learning
Speaker 1: to apply this to certain aspects of burnout, like callousness
Speaker 1: towards their patients. Interesting. One of the things I find
Speaker 1: with people is that it's a challenge to remember to
Speaker 1: be mindful during today. Our day starts and we go off.
Speaker 1: Do you have any practices that you recommend that help
Speaker 1: people remember to be mindful to actually do some of
Speaker 1: this practice, because I think I agree with you. I
Speaker 1: think having a seated meditation practice has a lot of benefit,
Speaker 1: but it almost seems that the ability to actually bring
Speaker 1: some of those concepts to mind as we go through
Speaker 1: our lives is of more benefit. And yet that's challenging,
Speaker 1: absolutely challenging. I think that's one of the biggest challenges
Speaker 1: that people face you can think of this is how
Speaker 1: do you start a new habit? So I think one
Speaker 1: of the key pieces here is a little paradoxical, which
Speaker 1: is to focus on after you've done the behavior. So
Speaker 1: after somebody has been mindful for a moment, or they've
Speaker 1: done a five minute meditation, or they've done a ten
Speaker 1: minute meditation or whatever, to really focus on what the
Speaker 1: result is, where they can see, oh, I learned something
Speaker 1: about myself, or even if they just mapped out a
Speaker 1: habit loop, right, so it takes some ten seconds they've
Speaker 1: mapped out a habit loop. If they focus afterwards and say, oh,
Speaker 1: what does it feel like to know my mind a
Speaker 1: little bit more? There's some juice to that reward. It
Speaker 1: feels better, and because it is rewarding, that will help
Speaker 1: to drive that behavior in the future. So previous moments
Speaker 1: of mindfulness will lead to future moments of mindfulness, I
Speaker 1: would suggest, especially if we notice the results of that,
Speaker 1: Oh you know I was aware, or oh I was
Speaker 1: kind of myself as compared to being mean to myself. Oh,
Speaker 1: that feels pretty good to be kind to myself. That's
Speaker 1: gonna update that reward value and it's going to be
Speaker 1: more rewarding for the brain. So the brain is going
Speaker 1: to say, oh, yeah, I want to do that again. Excellent.
Speaker 1: We are at the end of time. I've got one
Speaker 1: more question. I don't know if there is an answer
Speaker 1: to it, but I constantly wonder about it, and it
Speaker 1: is this. Every single time in my life that I
Speaker 1: have exercised, every single time afterwards, I have gone, that
Speaker 1: was a great idea. I'm glad I did that. And
Speaker 1: yet you would think with that kind of track record,
Speaker 1: I would sprint to my treadmill or to my exercise bike,
Speaker 1: and yet I still find it takes effort. Now again,
Speaker 1: I've been doing it long enough, consistently enough, It's not
Speaker 1: like I have have to put a huge amount of effort.
Speaker 1: But I'm just stunned that it seems like it should
Speaker 1: be easier. What's going on here? Yeah, So let me
Speaker 1: ask you. When you say, oh, that was a great idea,
Speaker 1: is that kind of up in your head or are
Speaker 1: you feeling down into your body and really paying attention
Speaker 1: to what your body feels like. I think I'm paying
Speaker 1: attention to my body. You say, oh, that was a
Speaker 1: great idea, what does it feel like? My body feels
Speaker 1: like it has energy. It feels like it's alive, it
Speaker 1: feels like it's loose. So the next time you think
Speaker 1: about exercising, do you recall that piece what it actually
Speaker 1: felt like the last time you did. When I want
Speaker 1: to get myself to exercise, I do, and what happens
Speaker 1: well I go exercise. I'm wondering if there's a habit
Speaker 1: in there is where it's like, oh, this felt like effort,
Speaker 1: but what you just described I didn't hear effort in it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think my brain does this mental calculation and
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, I'm going to go exercise, and
Speaker 1: that takes you know, imagine a big stack of quarters
Speaker 1: in one hand, that much energy, and then I look
Speaker 1: at my current level of energy and it's like one
Speaker 1: quarter and I go, I don't have that, And so
Speaker 1: you know, the strategy I use, of course, is to
Speaker 1: just go we'll just get started, and I go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's one quarter of effort versus quarter of energy. I
Speaker 1: can do that. You know that maybe that that's what's
Speaker 1: going on. I was a heroin addict and I would
Speaker 1: have robbed you a gunpoint for that. But I don't
Speaker 1: quite feel like I'm ready to do that for my
Speaker 1: thirty minutes on the dreadmill, right, right, Well, you're bringing
Speaker 1: up something really interesting, which is when there's an energy
Speaker 1: and mismatch, if we just feel into that in that moment,
Speaker 1: it can feel like this is not matched, right, And
Speaker 1: so you're saying the stack of quarters. It's not a
Speaker 1: stack of quarters to get started, yet intellectually it's hard
Speaker 1: to kind of remember, oh, when I get started, you know,
Speaker 1: that's like somebody handing me a stack of quarters, you know,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. Yeah, So remembering into that piece
Speaker 1: as compared to just feeling the energy level right now,
Speaker 1: if you go back and remember what does it feel
Speaker 1: like when I'm exercising, I'd be curious to see and
Speaker 1: we're not trying to kind of force the point here,
Speaker 1: but it'd be curious to see if that actually bring
Speaker 1: that stack of quarter that more quickly by remembering, you know, specifically, oh,
Speaker 1: what's it what's my energy level feel like when I'm exercising,
Speaker 1: not at the moment when I'm not exercising, Because when
Speaker 1: you're not exercising, it's different, right, that's right, that's true.
Speaker 1: It's not a it's not a fair comparison to say, well,
Speaker 1: exercisings one stack at quarters. No, it's this stack of
Speaker 1: quarters when I'm actually doing it, but just recalling it,
Speaker 1: not intellectually, but just recalling it. I'd be curious to
Speaker 1: see if that actually helps that movement into it more quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. You know. I always remember that basic idea
Speaker 1: that I think is so powerful, which is that we
Speaker 1: get motivated and then we do something, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times we start doing something and then the motivation
Speaker 1: comes rushing in. I just say, you know, I remind
Speaker 1: myself like it just feels like something that is that
Speaker 1: good for me to do is exercise, like it would
Speaker 1: just be always easy to do, and it sometimes just
Speaker 1: doesn't feel I mean, again, it doesn't feel terribly hard,
Speaker 1: but I have to convince myself it's a good idea,
Speaker 1: whereas you know, there's a there's some chocolate chip cookies
Speaker 1: on the table that I don't need any convincing on.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's the immediacy of the of the
Speaker 1: reward versus the expected output, So that could certainly be
Speaker 1: some of it. And I'm not saying this is the
Speaker 1: case for you, but just in case any of your
Speaker 1: listeners would benefit from this one thing that I see
Speaker 1: often is that people are kind of stuck up in
Speaker 1: their heads and they're saying, oh, it's a good idea
Speaker 1: to exercise, But our thinking brain does not hold a
Speaker 1: candle to our feeling body. Our feeling body is really
Speaker 1: what drives behavior. Which is why I was asking you
Speaker 1: about recalling what it feels like to exercise, because that
Speaker 1: could be that refreshment of the stack of quarters, simply
Speaker 1: by recalling what it feels like to exercise as compared
Speaker 1: to not currently exercising and thinking, oh I should exercise again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, I think and I do this with coaching
Speaker 1: clients a lot, which you were talking about before, which
Speaker 1: is you've got to take a moment and feel the
Speaker 1: goodness that came from the behavior you just took. Like
Speaker 1: we've got to stop and go, look how good this feels? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that we can update it. And yeah. I often
Speaker 1: with exercise, I will just feel into my body and
Speaker 1: be like, I don't like it. So I know if
Speaker 1: I exercise what it will be like and there I am. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And let's just take thirty seconds to apply this to
Speaker 1: other things. So one thing that I'm seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of is like self righteousness or divisiveness in in communities
Speaker 1: and families in society, and so it can feel immediately
Speaker 1: good to think, oh, I'm right, you know, and i'm
Speaker 1: gonna you know, I'm gonna push my point forward, and
Speaker 1: it's hard to in that moment remember what it feels
Speaker 1: like to actually be connected. So let's say that we're
Speaker 1: having an argument with our significant other or partner. There
Speaker 1: can be this tendency to say, I'm gonna dig in
Speaker 1: and i'm gonna you know, I'm gonna push my point,
Speaker 1: I'm right, you know, and I'm gonna fight or I'm
Speaker 1: not going to talk to them until they get my point.
Speaker 1: If we just feel into how it feels to be
Speaker 1: connected with the other person and we compare the two,
Speaker 1: there's this ancient saying, you know, anger with its honeyed
Speaker 1: tip and poisoned root. So that honeyed tip can just
Speaker 1: be so delicious right now, but we don't realize that
Speaker 1: we're actually causing harm to ourselves, to our relationships to others.
Speaker 1: And if we can just take a moment to feel
Speaker 1: into what it feels like to be kind, to be connected,
Speaker 1: that can sometimes be a great way to humble ourselves,
Speaker 1: to step back and say, oh, this actually feels better
Speaker 1: to be connected, you know, to try to understand where
Speaker 1: the person is coming from, rather than trying to ram
Speaker 1: my point down their throat, which generally doesn't go so well,
Speaker 1: does not tend to work. No, and yet talk about
Speaker 1: another feedback loop that we as a human species don't
Speaker 1: seem to have quite figured out. Yes, unfortunately, but we
Speaker 1: can this. Yeah, yeah, Well, thank you so much. It's
Speaker 1: a pleasure to see you again. I find your work fascinating.
Speaker 1: These topics are are near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 1: So thank you for taking some time with us. It's
Speaker 1: my pleasure. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
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